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UPDATED! What Your LinkedIn Member Number Means (and How to Find It)

What Your LinkedIn Member ID Means

Lower Linked Member IDs Have Gravitas

In certain social networking circles, a low LinkedIn member number gives the user nerdy gravitas. You must be pretty connected to industry VIPs, specifically a LinkedIn founder or someone else on the inside. Somehow, you got invited to join LinkedIn before everyone else.

A low LinkedIn member ID is similar to having a low employee number at a company like Google. For example, at Google, G00001 belonged to co-founder Larry Page; G00002 belonged to Sergey Brin; G003 belonged to former CEO Eric Schmidt; and G404 belonged to the former head of Google’s webspam team Matt Cutts. A low assigned number means you were there at the very beginning.

How the Member ID Scavenger Hunt Began

Our nerdy game started innocently enough. I noticed my LinkedIn member number was in my LinkedIn profile URL. So I wrote this blog post to show people where they could find their own LinkedIn member numbers and start dates. But then, LinkedIn turned it into a shell game, by hiding its member IDs in its code.

So I updated this post with new screenshots — multiple times. Soon enough, our curious journey down the LinkedIn rabbit hole caught on. People shared their member IDs and start dates in comments to help figure out what the number represented.

Is LinkedIn simply counting up from the first member? (It isn’t that easy.) Together, we are trying to solve the mystery of LinkedIn member IDs in what’s become a crowd-sourced scavenger hunt looking for clues.

The Double Meaning of a Low LinkedIn Member ID

While a LinkedIn Member ID scavenger hunt might be fun for those of us who remember when there wasn’t a LinkedIn. It signifies we belong to a pretty elite group. Yet, it also suggests that we’ve been around. In fact, for quite some time. In other words, this little game of mine is pretty irrelevant for members under the age of 40. Sure, you might be curious where your membership number falls in the LinkedIn ID continuum between the first and the 950 millionth LinkedIn member. (More later on.)

What, exactly, is a Low LinkedIn Number?

Compared to LinkedIn’s 950 million members today, my LinkedIn Member ID of 59,572 is pretty low. I joined the same year the social network was launched. LinkedIn was launched on May 5th, 2003, a day referred to as “Cinco de LinkedIn”. My member start date is December 10, 2003. And yet, as cool as that is, it also gives me pause. It also means I have been a LinkedIn member for more than two decades.

The LinkedIn Member ID Game Caught On

Our little game caught on. It turns out quite a few of us want to discover our LinkedIn numbers and start dates. In fact, a few too many of us experience a weird thrill from discovering our number is lower than our bestie — including journalists who write for industry-leading publications.

Fast Company Technology Editor Joins In

In a Fast Company article entitled LinkedIn’s Quietly Enduring Importance, Global Technology Editor Harry McCracken shares our quiet obsession. He has been thinking a great deal about LinkedIn for an article about LinkedIn Turns 20: An Oral History of an Unlikely Champion. He hyperlinked to this post as a resource to help others find their LinkedIn member number and start date. He then turned around to search for his:

 “It’s possible to look up your LinkedIn sign-up date, which in my case was December 29, 2003, when I became its 83,472nd member. Not that I’m competitive about that, but when I looked up my wife’s starting date just now and saw I’d joined a few weeks before she did, I felt a flutter of triumph.”

— Global Technology Editor Harry McCracken, Fast Company

What We’ve Learned So Far

LinkedIn Member Numbers Are Sequential*

* We think.

Early adopters helped shape what LinkedIn is today. The business social network relied on us to provide feedback about product deficiencies and, as we invested in premium licenses, to cover the cost of the product’s research and development. Because LinkedIn seems to number its users sequentially, the lower your member number, the longer you’ve called LinkedIn your business networking home. If I were the 59,572nd person to become a LinkedIn member as my LinkedIn Member ID suggests, it would be very low indeed. LinkedIn now has 950 million members.

Your Member ID Reflects Your Personality

Researchers who have studied technology adoption have found certain personality traits associated with when a person starts using a technology. Marketing firms, in turn, use those adoption personas to target specific kinds of potential users. (For more, see “The 5 Customer Segments of Technology Adoption“.)

LinkedIn Innovators

A super-low LinkedIn member number — within the first 2.5% of total current members — suggests you are an innovator. Innovators are risk-takers or risk-tolerant. (My LinkedIn Member Number puts me comfortably in this group. The first 1 percent of LinkedIn’s 950 million members would be the first 9.5 million members. If my math is correct, I was within the first 0.0062707368421 percent.)

LinkedIn Early Adopters

A low LinkedIn member number — from 2.5% to 13.5% of current members — makes you an early adopter and, possibly, an opinion leader. Early adopters often command attention and respect. They spread new ideas from innovators to the rest of the population. The early adopters of LinkedIn helped it to scale.

The Higher Your Number, The Younger You Are

If your number isn’t that low, of course, that’s perfectly okay. That simply means you weren’t around when LinkedIn took off. You’re an early adopter of more recent things. You may have been an early adopter of MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004), Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011), or even TikTok (2016).

So How Do You Find Your LinkedIn Member Number?

Below is our step-by-step guide to searching for your LinkedIn Member Number and start date. We welcome your comments. If our crowd-sourced scavenger hunt isn’t your cup of tea, we have other posts about LinkedIn in recruiting research blog.

To determine how you stack up, you first need to locate your member number. However, LinkedIn does not make it easy.

The LinkedIn Member Number Shell Game

Over the years, LinkedIn has moved where it displays your member number around — so much so that it resembles a kind of shell game. Only now, when you peer under each shell, your member number is nowhere to be found on the visible page. How do you find your LinkedIn member number, particularly if your LinkedIn profile sports a vanity URL?

Where Not to Look for Your LinkedIn Member ID

The web address for my LinkedIn profile is personalized with my name in the URL kristabradford. In other words, it has the LinkedIn domain “linkedin.com/in/” followed by my name kristabradford as the web address. That’s my public profile URL. But that wasn’t always the case.

Years before, when I clicked on the “View Full Profile” link, I used to be taken to a page that had my member number in the URL. My member number used to be visible in the web address of my profile page after “www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=” as shown in the screenshot below. But no more.

LinkedIn Number Hide ‘n’ Seek

After a while, LinkedIn stopped displaying your member number in the URL of your profile when you were logged in. Instead, LinkedIn moved member numbers into the very code for the page.

Where to Look in Chrome for Your Member ID

In Google Chrome, here’s how you find your LinkedIn Member Number:

  1. Select View in the Chrome Menu
  2. Select Developer in the dropdown menu
  3. Select View Source.
LinkedIn Member Number How to Find View Source

On the Source Code Page, Find your Member ID

  1. Check the Line Wrap box in the upper left corner of the Source Code page. (It makes it easier to view the code when you don’t have to scroll endlessly to the right.
  2. Type Control+F in Windows or Command+F on a Mac to open the Find function.
  3. In the Inspect window, search for “member” (without the quotes)
  4. The number after “member:” is your LinkedIn Member number.

Where to Find the Date You Joined LinkedIn

It is a little easier to find the exact date that you joined LinkedIn.

  • Click on the “Me” menu, which is the one with your photo in the upper right corner
  • Select “Settings & Privacy” in the drop-down.
  • Select “Data Privacy” in the left sidebar

Now select ‘Manage your data and activity,’ and you’ll be greeted by a list of important dates in your LinkedIn history. If you scroll to the last entry, you’ll find the date ‘You joined LinkedIn.’

Crowd-Sourced Member ID Intelligence

The First 1,200 LinkedIn Members Are Test Entries

My member ID is 59572. If LinkedIn counted its members sequentially, I would be the 59,572nd member to sign up for LinkedIn. Yet, one commenter below has disclosed the first 1,200 LinkedIn profiles are dummy test entries. If so, the counting of human LinkedIn member IDs starts with the number 1,201.

LinkedIn Member IDs May Have Been Refactored

Another commenter below suspects I may belong to a much smaller group of ultra-early adopters, pointing to History of LinkedIn. If that post is right, I’d be among the first 245 members to join. The commenter shared that her actual LinkedIn number was in the triple digits when her member ID was much larger: 87,882. Somewhere along the line, the number may have been refactored. Yet, my December 10, 2003 member ID of 59,572 does seem to fall within the 4,500 to 81,000 range.

My Member ID Agrees with LinkedIn Member Totals

LinkedIn Members Totals Chronology

Does Your Member Number Fit the Sequence?

I’ve updated the chronology below using member totals reported by LinkedIn itself. The list includes the Start Dates and Member IDs that were shared in the comments below.

So What’s Your Start Date and Member ID?

I invite you to share your name, LinkedIn member ID, and the date you joined. We welcome any other insights you’d have

To Get the Conversation Started

Krista Bradford: Dec. 10, 2003; LinkedIn Member ID 59572. My number seems to fit the sequence.

Krista Bradford

Krista Bradford

Founder and CEO of Intellerati | The Good Search. Retained executive search headhunter. Former investigative journalist. Wife of saxman. Mama of MD. Co-worker of Hamlet the Corgi. TikTok addict.View Author posts

We invite your comments.

  1. I too was an early adopter of LinkedIn. Not quite as early as you but December 14, 2005 is still nearly 15 years ago. I’m member 4,426,998 or 0.89%. Apparently I also spend WAYYYYY too much time on the internet.

  2. Very cool to be able to find your member number, I now know that I was 1,283,066.
    I do recall being able to see the “Member Since” date in the past. But when I tried again today (Sept 2020), no such luck. Perhaps it’s been removed from their site?

    Thanks for sharing!

  3. Member #22768883 – but they’ve changed the Settings & Privacy tab since this article, does anyone know where to find it now?

  4. I remember getting an email from Reid saying what number I was. That was a long time ago. I just looked up how to find this number and came across this site. Thanks for the insight. I’m member 34,850 and signed up on October 15th 2003.

  5. Member #877463

    July 23, 2004

    There used to be a group of the first 1,000,000 to join, but that’s disappeared to.

  6. It’s not only about being an innovator if you joined early, but it also says something about who you hang out with and who might have referred you to the new service…
    Joel Block: Sept 12, 2003; LinkedIn Member ID 24535

  7. I am member 24,065. I must have signed up pretty early, though I have never considered myself a power user of LinkedIn.

    1. Nope, I don’t think that’s right.

      I joined on January 1, 2004 — LI still was in the triple digits at that point (about 245 members by the end of 2003) — and that ID number shows me as 87882 which is not accurate as a sequential join figure. I was told by a LI employee that my number was in triple digits.

      They probably refactored the system and had to create a minimum number of digits for each profile number.

      see also:

      https://penningtoncreative.com/history-of-linkedin/

      LinkedIn was officially launched in May, 2003, but it was not an immediate hit. At the end of 2003, LinkedIn had a mere 245 members, many of whom were professional connections of the founding team.

      My start date on my profile is January 1, 2004 – so 3 digit join date makes sense – but I can’t find it on my profile anymore.

      @Charles — if you joined in August 13, you probably have a number under 300, not 17,300

  8. To all you YOUNGSTERS out there. I joined LinkedIn on July 2, 2003.
    I am member number 11,200. The first 1,200 LinkedIn profiles were dummy test entries, making my actual member number 10,000 exactly. If you can beat that please find me on LinkedIn so we can shoot the breeze about the old days.

  9. I joined outside the US (in The Netherlands) on 22 September 2003 as member # 26398. I also had an email from founder Reid Hoffman that was sent to all the first 100.000 members.

  10. I’ll be 20 years on Linkedin during January,2024. I got the Reid Hoffman email as well which included my number 140572

    Time flies.

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